Despite living in Baltimore for six years, I didn't think much about crime. I certainly didn't think about it the way some friends and family did, pointing out statistics that ranked us as the second most dangerous city in the country and urging us to move to the suburbs.

That is, until it came bleeding on my porch, knocking on my door. Then it broke my door down.

Since moving out of downtown, I realize we might have lived in a bit of a cocoon there. We knew our neighbors, and mostly we were surrounded by longtime city dwellers or medical residents. We looked out for each other. The closest we ever came to crime was a mugging across the street, in broad daylight, where our neighbors ran the guy down, beat him up, and pinned him down until the police arrived. Our cars were rifled through the couple of times we left them unlocked, but we expected that. Though I've never loved spending nights alone, we really didn't worry.

Then a few months ago, we moved to the outskirts, to a lovely and well-connected neighborhood. We already know more neighbors than we did in years at the old place, and we are in more frequent contact. But our historic and beautiful neighborhood borders on a different Baltimore. Not the one that shimmers on the waterfront, commanding high rents, empty nesters and advanced degrees. This Baltimore is the one outsiders think of-- the one from The Wire (which I still refuse to watch). I can see it from my bedroom window and, as it turns out, it can see me. It doesn't care about my picket fence or my young children. It doesn't care about me. Only what I have that it can take.

One night, a couple months ago we sat on our porch to catch our breath at the end of a long day. We heard a gunshot. Close. When we lived downtown, I claimed to have heard them all the time. Daniel always dismissed them as firecrackers, which they probably were (the large and loud Israeli family across the street celebrated even the smallest occasion, say, Tuesday, with firecrackers). But this time, we knew what it was right away.

It is strangely silent after a gunshot. I expected to hear a revving engine or a wailing voice or maybe even another shot. But it was silent. We saw a young man run onto our street, then scramble over a fence and into our neighbor's yard. We went inside to find her number, then on the back patio for several minutes until we heard the sirens approaching. When we called her on our way back inside, she said, "Are you calling about the guy knocking on your door?" In the few minutes we had been out back, the gunshot victim, the one we'd seen, had come to our door seeking help, bleeding all over our porch. We never heard him knocking and didn't see him before he got into a car and left. Still, we were up all night, a helicopter hovering over our house, flashing lights in our yard. First we talked to police, then we waited for the crime lab, then we lay awake in bed. In the morning we awoke to find blood still spattered on our steps. We were shaken, but reminded ourselves that he had only sought our help. We were not targets.

I had long consoled myself that violent crime in Baltimore, by and large, was an inside job. Those convicted (or accused) of gun-related charges are very often also the targets of gun-related crime (I once saw a statistic I can't find that put that percentage in the high 90s). Sure, there are random acts, but they are far less frequent. This victim on the doorstep incident was unsettling, obviously, but it didn't challenge my thinking. When tracked down and questioned by police of his whereabouts at the time of the shooting, he made a story up about how he'd just been "at the store." He was, in all likelihood, far from innocent. Things slowly got back to normal. Until several weeks later when Daniel kept calling from Chicago while I was on my way to work. Running late, I had dialed into a meeting I should have already been in. I clicked over to see what was wrong, and he told me our alarm was going off. This was a familiar routine for us. We have always had an alarm since living in the city, and sometimes they go off for no reason. Police are usually dispatched, they check it out, only let us know if something's wrong, and charge a fee for a false alarm. This time it wasn't false.

When I got home, after my sweet neighbor and my mom, the police were already gone, having determined the assailant "didn't get in." It didn't take me long to determine they were wrong. After trying to kick our door in, he had broken the glass and climbed through. Due to a faulty sensor, our alarm did not go off immediately; not until he was walking through our house. At that point, he took the easiest thing he could grab, my laptop, dropped a small TV on the floor and ran. We were terribly fortunate.

I was distraught; the busted door a glaring reminder of what he had taken, and that it was more than I knew how to replace. That day I dealt with a somber parade of police officers, a crime lab technician, handyman, ADT, concerned neighbors and family. Our neighbors, family, and landlord have been wonderfully supportive, offering a place to go, company, and enhanced security measures. I am on a first-name basis with the technician who replaced and reinforced alarm sensors and showed up the day of the incident. Meanwhile, by the time Daniel got home, all evidence had been removed, wiped down, swept and vacuumed. It must have been surreal. We don't yet know what we will do.

I am struck by the complexity of it all-- I am struggling with whether I should even have written this. It is terrible to be a victim—to feel vulnerable, watched, powerless. Really, though, I can't say anything has changed. Nothing is different than it was before; this risk was always here. When I look out the window at my other city, it's not what you might think. Certainly, there are people out there without useful purpose, without conviction, who will take what is not theirs. But they are not what I see. I see young boys in football pads, fresh from practice. I see women coming home in scrubs, heavy laden, to cook dinner for their children. I see little girls laughing. I see fathers playing with their sons. What I see and don't see is larger than race or money, more complicated than it might seem.

When the other Baltimore came knocking, I did nothing. And I guess that's all I could do. But I am perplexed by my desire to balance protecting my own and having compassion for others who want to do the same. That white picket fence is a vulgar divider.

I remember when we picked our puggle, Mosotos, up from the vet when we adopted him in ‘burbs. I had to walk him into the woods adjacent to the parking lot to get him to pee before bringing him in the car. Three weeks of city living later, when we came back for a follow-up, he proudly peed on a lamp post. City living is different.

So, mothering a mutt being my only previous foray into parenting, and myself a cul-de-sac-raised girl, I wondered what it would be like to raise city kids. Then I realized they didn’t know any better. Until…Though we are technically still in “The City,” it sure doesn’t feel like it. I have seen more types of bugs and spiders than I can even count, many in my house. There are burrows all over the landscaped parts of the yard that I am pretending are inhabited by chipmunks Daniel almost hit a deer on his way to the airport early one morning. We have seen hummingbirds in our geraniums (that’s right; we have geraniums), and praying mantises (manti?) abound. We have wildlife here. And that’s great, except my kids have never encountered it before and aren’t quite sure what to do with it.

“Mommy! Mirabella cried one day, regarding a robin in the yard, “Look at that pigeon!” I explained that pigeons are just one type of bird, and that they don’t live everywhere. Later, when I described a woodpecker I had seen, she said, “That’s a type of pigeon, right?” We’ll get there.

Unfortunately, that’s not the only wildlife we’ve encountered in the Village, or in our home. As Daniel and I sat watching a movie the other night, I saw a mouse scamper from under the fridge and across the kitchen floor. I saw Daniel pretend not to notice it until I mentioned it. When we moved in, we found a closet full of poison and strange electric devices that are supposed to repel rodents. Apparently, they do not. As my dad reminded me, it wouldn’t be fair to call it a country mouse, but the one I’ve seen so far seemed much better fed than our occasional downtown mice. I know we live in a 130-year-old house. But I’d really rather not share the space.

Before

When I first moved to Baltimore in 2005, I was a part-time grad student at Hopkins. I was a technical writer with not much to do, I was newly engaged and a new homeowner; I was a lot of things. This was in my not-so-smart ardor days. I had a down-to-earth professor who wrote our textbook, gave me A-minuses and had two kids. I felt I could not relate to her. She had recently moved out of the city. My 24-year-old self thought she was old. She was probably in her early 30's. She said she loved the city, but her eldest child was three. "My friends call it the three-foot-rule," she said. "You move into the city before you have kids, and you can stay once you have them, but only until they're three feet tall. Then you start running out of space and have to think about a yard and school, so you move to the county." This did not evoke any emotion in me because I was sure I would be long gone by the time we had kids. I used to say it to city skeptics as if it were a certainty.

When I became pregnant with our first child and we were still firmly planted in the city, I thought we'd be out of there before she could walk. Then just one more summer. Then I decided my procreation plans shouldn't be dictated by the housing market, so I became pregnant again. But by the time our second daughter came along, something changed. We learned how to really be here. We learned to love our neighborhood, to love our neighbors. We became part of the community and joined a church on our street. We stopped driving to the suburbs for everything and really embraced our city life. We fell in love.

It is very difficult to explain to people who have never lived in a city why we're sad to leave, or what we'll miss when we're gone. None of them have ever asked why we're leaving downtown; they figure they know. Parking is a daily struggle, sure, and 1310 square feet distributed across three levels is not a lot. Nights have been noisy, our cars have occasionally been rifled through; life is different in the city. I know my mother has been praying for a way out for us for years, and in some ways it is an answer to prayer. But our life is about to change, and we are having trouble adjusting to even the thought of it.

What I love about living in the city is the energy. I love knowing and supporting independent shop owners who live in my neighborhood. I love the restaurants and the activity, love the freedom and walking everywhere. I love not having to make plans (which is kind of surprising, since I'm always making plans). I like early morning walks along the harbor with my babies. I like wandering out the door on a Saturday with no agenda and knowing I can go to a farmer's market, a festival, the park, the pool, the harbor-- all for nearly free. I will miss after-dinner walks to the park and to get ice cream, wandering down the street to eat pizza in a courtyard. I will miss our meandering date nights to Camden Yards. I'll miss the enormous playground two blocks from our house, or the fantastic pool and sprayground that costs just $1.50 that Emerie hasn't had the chance to use. I'll miss breezy nights on the two-story rooftop deck Daniel took two and a half summers to build himself. I will miss it.

After

On what it seems will be our last trip to the playground while it's just a stroll away, the girls and I ran into a friend from church and her family. "I heard a rumor that you're moving," she said and asked where as our daughters embraced and ran off to play.

I heard myself tell her we'd be just inside the city, "eight miles and a world away." I struggled to describe the location, which is a haven of historic beauty in the middle of a depressed area. Unless you've been there, you just don't know. In some ways, I feel it will feature some of the more difficult aspects of "city living" than living downtown has. "It has a yard, and a driveway, and a picket fence, if you can believe that," I said. She gave me a knowing look. I felt like a traitor. Most people outside our city circle assumed we would do anything to get out. But on the inside, we had a sort of code. Parking is terrible, but you get sort of used to it. Crime is scary, but we can work to change it. Schools are abysmal, but we can build charters and join the school board. We joined alliances, we volunteered at events, we were in on it. We were homesteaders, committing to city life-- the good and the bad. I thought I'd see my little girls in plaid charter school uniforms. And maybe someday I will, but not here. I defected.

Though I never intended to, it turns out I followed the three-foot-rule after all. I wonder if my city kids, who in two days will have a front porch and a backyard with a gazebo and hammock and stepping stones, will ever remember our urbanite life. I wonder if this is good-bye to it, or a departure for now. Either way, though I look forward to the next thing for us, still I mourn this loss.

About Me

Christina | Virginia BeachPsuedo Yankee, city-loving former working mom of four finds herself home with the kids and transplanted to the somewhat Southern suburbs. Finding her feet while still attempting to harness the power of the passion of her youth for useful good.